OTTAWA — The B.C. government is exchanging ideas with the Harper government on ways to ease the province’s burden in paying back the $1.6-billion advance it received from Ottawa to establish the Harmonized Sales Tax in 2010, Premier Christy Clark said Wednesday.

Clark, who spent Tuesday in Ottawa meeting with Conservative politicians on various federal-provincial issues, said her government is floating several payback options.

Clark said her government has suggested that B.C. receive some credit for the more than two and a half years the HST will be in place before it is dismantled.

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The government has projected that it will dismantle the HST and return to the provincial sales tax system by March of 2013.

The HST, which combines the federal goods and services tax with the provincial sales tax, went into effect on July 1, 2010. B.C. was required, as a condition of receiving $1.6 billion from Ottawa to help in the transition, to keep the tax in place for five years.

But British Columbians voted in a referendum in August to scrap the tax.

Clark said she’d like B.C. to get “credit for time served” for the time the HST is going to be in place.

“We’re putting everything on the table,” Clark said.

“I don’t know what’s going to be in the final agreement, but we are talking about the time frame for repayment. That’s one of the things that would give us some relief.

“One of the things that would give us some relief is credit for time served, that might give us some relief. There’s a whole number of things the feds could do to make things a little easier for British Columbia.”

She noted that provinces are sometimes given 10 years to repay funds owed to Ottawa, though she wouldn’t specify what specific terms her government was seeking from Ottawa.

Clark also noted that she didn’t engage in any negotiations while in Ottawa Tuesday. That’s the responsibility of federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and his provincial counterpart, Kevin Falcon.

And ideas are going both ways, she added.

“There’s a lot of things that are on the table, and they’re coming up with ideas too,” she said.

Falcon indicated earlier this week that B.C. may not be able to meet its pledge to balance the budget by 2013-14.

He said B.C. is expecting a $3.1 billion deficit for the 2011-12 year, up $313 million from his projection just three months ago.

Clark was asked why the federal government should consider cutting B.C. some slack.

“This was a referendum, a decision by the people, and we’re trying to deal our way through it as well as we possibly can,” she said.

“So I’m hoping they’ll take a look at our tight fiscal circumstances and recognize it’s going to be tough for us to balance our budget if we don’t work things through.”